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Member (Idle past 864 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Osama Bin Laden Gets What He Gives | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Tram law Member (Idle past 4732 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
Millions of Iraqis and Afghans are dead?
This is all Israel's fault?
LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL!
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4045 Joined: Member Rating: 7.6 |
Millions of Iraqis and Afghans are dead? Yes. This is true as a matter of simple fact. It's the true cost of war, and shows exactly how disproportionate the American response was. A few thousand of our citizens were killed on 9/11, and that was a tragedy...which we compounded with two military invasions that cost hundreds of thousands to millions of civilian lives, threw two nations into chaos, and did nothing to actually stop terrorism, which still continues to occur. The sickening thing, of course, is how few Americans even care that hundreds of thousands to millions of Iraqis and Afghans were killed as a direct result of the US military operations in those countries.
This is all Israel's fault? No, and that's not at all what dronester said. Perhaps you should read more carefully:
quote: dronester was very clearly telling you that assassinating bin Laden, and in fact the general US policy of using military force to combat terrorism (as opposed to more appropriate police, intelligence, and occasional special forces actions) is basically identical to the doctrine Isreal has been using for years to do the same, with absolutely zero success. Military response does not curtail terrorism, it encourages more.
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Tram law Member (Idle past 4732 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
According to the Iraqi Body Count:
Iraq Body Count So that's a far cry from the millions of civilians dead. So there's something screwy in that statement of millions.
dronester was very clearly telling you that assassinating bin Laden, and in fact the general US policy of using military force to combat terrorism (as opposed to more appropriate police, intelligence, and occasional special forces actions) is basically identical to the doctrine Isreal has been using for years to do the same, with absolutely zero success. Military response does not curtail terrorism, it encourages more.
Right. So we should just let them kill us and we should just give up because we can't hope to fight them all. Brilliant. And Israel is not a terrorist state.
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dronestar Member Posts: 1417 From: usa Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
DA writes: It is easy to be critical of our decisions when looking through the rear view window. And it is also very easy to be critical when the decisions are incredibly dumb, immoral, and criminal.
DA writes: We did not create Bin Laden anymore than we created Saddam Husein (who we also supported in Iraq's war against Iran). Well, that's lovely. Apparently it's ok to you that america only SUPPORT the terrorist's atrocities as long as we don't CREATE them. However, you might want to look deeper into history. The CIA assisted. The CIA funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a member. And when Hussein gassed the Kurds, after the world condemned him, the USA turned around and REWARDED the atrocity by giving him another billion dollars worth of military aid. Take a real long look at this enthusiastic, smiling photo showing two people shaking hands. It SHOULD disgust most intelligent and moral people:Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein DA writes: These people are adult human beings who made decisions to turn their anger and wrath against America even before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan. Umm, I guess I already forgot,... when exactly did Iraqis turn their anger against the USA? Was it during the 1990s when the USA led crippling sanctions against the Iraqis that murdered half a million of their children? When Madeline Albright said it was worth killing half a million children to bring about political change? You might want to research the term "terrorists" some time and see if it applies to the US.
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Tram law Member (Idle past 4732 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
Right, because sanctions are done against countries for fun and profit.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Sorry I really don't have any sympathy for this guy. I wasn't suggesting that you should, I was just answering the question asked.
You can't blame them for taking him out especially after the adrenaline fueled fire fight with the body guards and his wife rushing at them. Even highly trained professionals like the Navy Seals are not going to put there lives on the line in hopes that Bin Laden was not armed. We just don't have the luxury of the same insight that they had as boots on the ground in the middle of a goddamn firefight. Still, I wonder why they didn't make more of an effort to take him alive. I would have thought that all this GTMO interrogations of low-level insurgents would pale in comparison to the big fish. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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dronestar Member Posts: 1417 From: usa Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
Hey Jar,
Generally, I liked your points but the following struck me as a curious statement:
Jar writes: How does it look to the folk living in the Middle East that are as ignorant of much of the facts, history and geopolitics as the average American? First of all, the average american is pretty ignorant. Most will willfully vote AGAINST their self interests. And half of them don't even vote. Secondly, when I visited Egypt I was amazed at how knowledgeable the average Egyptian was. Even the teens and children were asking me questions regarding American politics. Pretty impressive. And it seems the average Middle Eastern is quite aware of American interference in the area and its criminal support of Israel over human rights. Generally speaking, I would say people at the wrong end of the gun are often more aware than the gun-holder regarding the true nature of things. Just my 2 cents.
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
They are aware of a different set of "facts", but not of all or even most of the facts.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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ramoss Member (Idle past 640 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
In the short term.. it means a good deal of propaganda.
In the long term, it depends. Osama was a charismatic leader that inspired a lot of people to open up their pocketbooks to the cause. The current second in command is irritating and obnoxious. If he does succeed OBL , then it is likely huge amount of resources, and support will disappear. With OBL gone, there is the reasonable potential for the Taliban to distance themselves from al qaidia. If they do that, then for them to enter into peace talks with the government of Afghanistan is increased drastically. Al qaidia had been billing itself as the only alternative to a lot of these brutal dictatorships in the Arab world. With the uprisings, and the lack of charismatic leadership , it is very possible that they will lose the support of much of the Arab world. In the short term, it is a propaganda tool on both sides. In the long run, it all depends on who wins being the replacement for him.
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DevilsAdvocate Member (Idle past 3129 days) Posts: 1548 Joined: |
And it is also very easy to be critical when the decisions are incredibly dumb, immoral, and criminal. So says you. I am sure in retrospect some decisions were shown to make matters worse not better however to label them all as criminal and immoral is painting with a broad brush of ignorance of why these decisions were made. Each should be analyzed for historical context of why they were made and what were the resulting consequences of these decesions.
Well, that's lovely. Apparently it's ok to you that america only SUPPORT the terrorist's atrocities as long as we don't CREATE them. No one supported these attrocities when they occured. If we had known these very same people would turn on us we would have never supported them in the first place. Again, easy words to say in retrospect.
However, you might want to look deeper into history. The CIA assisted. The CIA funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a member. I am not familiar with this. If you can provide evidence I will investigate further. Of course there are actions and decisions that our government later regrets having made (i.e. Bay of Pigs invasion, etc). However, again we can not predict the future (sometimes disastrous). Again we have to see what the context of these decisions and why we made them at the time. I would say though that we have for the most part as a country made good decisions over bad ones through history in our effort to promote democracy around the world. Of course mistakes (again sometimes disastrous) have been and will continue to be made. However, for the most part we are a promoter of good will around the world and I will never be ashamed to be called an American or to have served in the US military.
Umm, I guess I already forgot,... when exactly did Iraqis turn their anger against the USA? Was it during the 1990s when the USA led crippling sanctions against the Iraqis that murdered half a million of their children? Again you are distorting the facts. All of the figures shown above were provided solely by Saddam Hussein's government not by any outside entities. Maybe the following will help shed light on the inaccurate claims in laying the blame on America when it really was the result of the Iraqi government itself (Saddam Hussein) who was guilty of deliberately mismanaging tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian aid as shown below:
Genocide scholar Milton Leitenberg writes: raq reported its infant mortality for 1987 (children under one year of age dying) as 70 per 1000 and child mortality (children under 5 years of age) as 96 per 1000, both extremely high figures. Since then Iraqi authorities have claimed that the pre-1990 levels were only one-third that high. All alleged post-1990 figures on infant and child mortality in Iraq are supplied by the Iraqi government agencies. There is no mechanism by which the WHO, UNICEF, or any other international agency can gather such data. The numbers claimed by Iraq for child mortality since 1991 do not appear credible but are widely repeated in the press worldwide... At the same time, Iraq has diverted attention from its violations by alleging a humanitarian crisis caused by the UNSC-mandated sanctions. The crux of this issue is that the deterioration of the nutritional status of children has been the result of policy choices made by the Iraqi government in the intervening years, rather than by the sanctions directly. Precisely because of exceptions included in the original UN Security Council sanctions resolutions, Iraq always had the ability since 1991 to import food and medicines, and Iraq additionally had both the currency reserves and sufficient current earnings with which to do so. The Iraqi government simply chose to use its money and its earnings for other purposes. Therefore, if child mortality and malnutrition have been excessive since 1991, that is not due to the sanctions directly, but to the choices that the Iraqi government has made for ten years on how to use its available funds under constrained circumstances. economist Michael Spagat writes: First, the Kurdish zone was free of Saddam’s control. In the South/centre, though, the reaction of Saddam Hussein’s regime to the sanctions must be part of a full explanation for child mortality patterns in this zone. ... A second potential explanation for the strange patterns displayed by the South/ Centre in the [data] is that they were not real but, rather, results of manipulations by the Iraqi government Former President Bill Clinton writes: Before the sanctions, the year before the Gulf War, and you said this ... how much money did Iraq earn from oil? Answer$16 billion. How much money did Iraq earn last year from oil? How much money did they get, cash on the barrel head, to Saddam Hussein? Answer$19 billion that he can use exclusively for food, for medicine, to develop his country. He’s got more money now, $3 billion a year more than he had nine years ago. If any child is without food or medicine or a roof over his or her head in Iraq, it’s because he is claiming the sanctions are doing it and sticking it to his own children. When Madeline Albright said it was worth killing half a million children to bring about political change? She made a statement she later regretted making. I agree though it was poorly worded and sounded inhumane in context to the question.
You might want to research the term "terrorists" some time and see if it applies to the US. I disagree. Have we made mistakes as Americans. Of course. Do we have a policy of deliberately murdering innocent people and children. Of course not. We are not the evil people you make us out to be. You do not even acknowledge the billions of dollars in aid and military support we provide to people around the world on a daily basis (i.e. our military provided humanitarian aid to Japan and Haiti in the latest news). Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given. "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
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DevilsAdvocate Member (Idle past 3129 days) Posts: 1548 Joined: |
We just don't have the luxury of the same insight that they had as boots on the ground in the middle of a goddamn firefight. Still, I wonder why they didn't make more of an effort to take him alive. I would have thought that all this GTMO interrogations of low-level insurgents would pale in comparison to the big fish. Even after a week after the raid on Bin Laden's compound we do not have the full, complete and accurate story on how the raid went down. However, as more information comes out it sounds like the Seals had to make split second decisions after a fire-fight with Bin Laden's courier and a couple of people that rushed them. An AK-47 was found within reach of Bin Laden when he was killed. Latest account of events (from Reuters):
A SEAL squad moved in darkness on the guest house, one of two dwellings inside the walls of bin Laden's compound. They were met with hostile fire. As they moved in, they shot a man who was in the guest house. He turned out to be Abu Ahmed Al-Kuwaiti, the al Qaeda courier whose activities the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies had been investigating for years and who they believed would lead them to bin Laden. After shooting al-Kuwaiti, the two sources familiar with official accounts said, U.S. commandos moved onto the compound's three-story main residence. As they entered the house, they saw a man with his hands behind his back. Fearing that the man might be holding a weapon behind him, the commandos shot him dead. It turned out that the man, who was the brother of Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti and another suspected al Qaeda courier, was not holding a weapon, according to the two sources familiar with official accounts. However, the attackers did subsequently find weapons near the second man's body, the sources said. After killing the second courier, commandos started climbing the stairs to the house's upper floors. As they climbed, a man charged down the stairs at them, and was shot dead. U.S. authorities now believe that he was Osama bin Laden's son. As commandos proceeded up the stairs, the sources said, they saw a person they believed was bin Laden either poke his head out of a door or over a balcony. One of the sources said that the attackers took at least one shot at the person, who then retreated back inside the room he had come from. The U.S. commandos proceeded to the top floor and into the room where the man had retreated. While entering the room, they were rushed by a woman. The woman, now believed to be one of bin Laden's wives, was shot in the leg. After shooting her, the commandos pushed her to the side. Precisely what bin Laden then did, and what his reaction was when the commandos entered and shot his wife, is unclear.But the people familiar with official accounts said the attackers did not wait for much of a reaction, and almost immediately shot the al Qaeda leader dead. And from ABC:
The Americans were also fired on by a man who was one of bin Laden's trusted couriers, officials said. The courier was killed by return fire from the SEALs, and they did not encounter any additional gunfire. That early gunfire indicated to the SEALs that they might expect further resistance. And they did find a small arsenal of weapons in the home. "We recovered three AK-47s and two pistols from the compound. They weren't storming a PTA meeting. They were storming into Osama Bin Laden's fortress hideout," said the same U.S. official. At least one AK-47 was found in bin Laden's room. Again, enough resistance existed to precipitate shoot to kill actions of the Seals. Just as in police raids unless hostages were thought to be involved, raids typically will have shoot to kill orders to protect those conducting the raid from being injured and killed themselves. The Seal team went into the compound not knowing the amount of armed resistance that they would face and so anticipated (correctly) the worst. No one can fault them for this. More was gained from the material evidence in the compound than probably would be gleaned from keeping Bin Laden alive. Also, with Bin Laden alive and in US custody this could spark more violence than taking out the head of Al Queda. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given. "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
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Phat Member Posts: 18348 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
The pentagon released some videos seized from the Bin Laden raid. After watching this, and after thinking more about it, I conclude that we don't even consider the possibility that getting caught was no big deal for Bin Laden. Our multi billion dollar intelligence was being led on a wild goose chase for many years, and we are too arrogant to admit it.
Edited by Phat, : No reason given.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3990 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
O for cryin' out loud...
Since he tried so very hard not to be found, we can assume that being found was a very big deal indeed to Osama bin Laden. I grew up in a tribal world: I know exactly how they think. It's too bad he could only be killed once. That's how they think. You cannot fight fire with marshmallows. Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? -Shakespeare Real things always push back.-William James
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fearandloathing Member (Idle past 4173 days) Posts: 990 From: Burlington, NC, USA Joined: |
this
Pakistan leaks death pictures "I hate to advocate the use of drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they always worked for me." - Hunter S. Thompson Ad astra per aspera
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Trae Member (Idle past 4334 days) Posts: 442 From: Fremont, CA, USA Joined: |
As far as I’ve been led to believe she die move towards them and was shot and he resisted in the sense of moving away. He’s a known mass murderer who could have done all manner of things, I don’t see why they had to give him any benefit of the doubt.
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